The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

?php
>

Sunday, June 18, 2017

No Tolerance for Extremism - Denis MacEoin

by Denis MacEoin

Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has everything to do
with today's radicals and the violence they commit.

At the moment, the bar for
taking extremists out of circulation is set ridiculously high. People
known for their own extremism that reaches pre-terrorist levels should
not be walking the streets when they have expressed support for Islamic
State (ISIS) or tried to head to Syria or called for the destruction of
Britain and other democracies or allied themselves to people already in
prison. Their demand for free speech or freedom of belief must never be
elevated above the rights of citizens to live safely in their own towns
and cities. It is essential for parliament to lower the bar.

Is this to be the political landscape for the future, where
groups of people demanding death and destruction are given the freedom
of the streets whilst those wishing to hold a peaceful celebration are
prevented from doing so?

To see extremist Islam as a "perversion" of Islam misses an
important point. The politically correct insistence that radical
versions of Islam somehow pervert an essentially peaceful and tolerant
faith forces policy-makers and legislators, church leaders, rabbis,
interfaith workers and the public at large to leave to one side an
important reality. Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has
everything to do with today's radicals and the violence they commit. The
Qur'an is explicit in its hatred for pagans, Jews and Christians. It
calls for the fighting of holy war (jihad) to conquer the non-Muslim
world, subdue it, and gradually bring it into the fold of Islam. Islam
has been at war with Europe since the seventh century.

On the Sunday morning after the terrorist attacks in London the night
of June 3, British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the nation in a powerful speech. It deserves to be read in full, but several points stand out and call for a response.

We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue
as they are. Things need to change and they need to change in four
important ways.First, while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks,
they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by
the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred,
sows division and promotes sectarianism.It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom,
democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam.

Lower down, she enhances that by saying:

Second, we cannot allow this ideology the safe space it
needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big
companies that provide internet-based services provide.

No one who has watched the endless stream of radical Muslim preachers
who appear on YouTube or who post extremist, anti-Western,
anti-democratic, or anti-Semitic opinions on Facebook would object to
May's stricture. But given earlier attempts to rein in the providers of
so many internet spaces in a demand for better scrutiny and the removal
of radicalizing material from their sites, we must remain pessimistic
about how far May or any other Western leader can bring effective
pressure to bear. Without strong financial disincentives, these rulers
of the internet will pay little heed to the concerns of the wider public
and our security services.

Perhaps May's strongest statement comes some lines later:

While we have made significant progress in recent years,
there is -- to be frank -- far too much tolerance of extremism in our
country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and
stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will
require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.

Here, she puts her finger on the most sensitive yet compelling reason
for our vulnerability. The democracies have been and still are weakened
by the very things that in other contexts give us strength. May speaks
rightly of our "pluralistic British values". But those values include
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, open-mindedness, and tolerance
-- things that are not held as desirable values in any Muslim country.
Such values are key to our survival as free and tolerant people
unrestricted by any overarching ideology. Yet May is right. Even
toleration has its limits. While allowing Muslims to live in our
societies with full freedom to live their lives according to the tenets
of their faith is desirable expression of our openness and love for
humanity, we have been tolerant of radical Islam and even traditionalist
and conservative Islam where it leads into radicalization and an
extremism that erupts in physical assaults, fatalities, and, as intended, widespread public fear.

For years, we have known the identities of radical Islamic preachers
and extremist organizations, but we have allowed them to bring their
hatred for us onto university and college campuses, into mosques and
Islamic centres, and even onto our streets, where they set up stalls to
speak and hand out literature. Scroll down here or here
to find long lists of radical individuals and organizations, few of
which have even been banned. Few terrorist suspects have ever been
deported. In a Telegraph article from 2015, one reads:

Here is an astonishing figure to mull over. In the past
10 years, the UK has deported just 12 terrorism suspects from its shores
under its Deportation with Assurances (DWA) scheme. In the same period,
France deported more than 100 more. The British figures come from a
review of the DWA programme that is unlikely to be published until after
the general election. It suggests, as we have always suspected, that
the UK remains a soft touch for foreign-born jihadists.

It took eight years, 15 court cases and a £25 million bill to keep the hate preacher and terrorist fighter Abu Hamza
and his huge family in the UK before he was finally deported (to the
United States) in 2012, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In that same year, Theresa May (then Home Secretary) was frustrated because another sinister figure, Abu Qatada,
could not be deported to Jordan because the European Court of Human
Rights had ruled against it for fear of his being tortured there. But in
2013, once Jordan agreed not to do so, he was sent there only to be
tried and set free. Last year, he used Twitter to urge Muslims to leave
the UK for fear of persecution and "bloodshed" -- a possible
encouragement to would-be jihadis to head abroad. May spoke vehemently
against the Strasbourg ruling:

It is simply isn't acceptable, that after guarantees from
the Jordanians about his treatment, after British courts have found
that he is dangerous, after his removal has been approved by the highest
courts in our land, we still cannot deport dangerous foreign nationals....The right place for a terrorist is a prison cell. The right place for
a foreign terrorist is a foreign prison cell far away from Britain.

We constantly undermine ourselves by our need to be principled. This
is an ongoing problem in politics. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's
Labour Party, is frequently described as a man of principle,
and in many ways that judgement seems fair. Certainly, he has stuck by
his socialist principles even if they have led him to adopt positions
not well aimed at creating security for Britain. He has supported
the IRA; refused many times to condemn their terrorist attacks; has
called Hamas and Hizbullah his "friends" and invited their
representatives to the British parliament. If that were not enough, he has boasted of his opposition to every piece of anti-terrorist legislation parliament has tried to pass.

In a 2015 interview just shown by the tabloid newspaper The Sun, Corbyn spoke with the Bahrain-based LuaLua Television. Although The Sun
is not a reliable source, the clip from the interview shows Corbyn
speaking in English with an accurate Arabic translation in subtitles.
The interviewer speaks in Arabic. What are alarming are Corbyn's
statements, including a criticism of the UK government laws preventing
would-be fighters who have travelled to Syria and from returning to the
UK:

The British government's response has been to try to make
it impossible for them to travel, to restrict their ability to travel,
to take upon themselves the ability to remove passports and, strangely,
to deny people the right of return – which is legally a very
questionable decision.

Surely no responsible politician would want to make it easy for jihadi fighters to come and go between Syria and the UK, especially while Islamic State is encouraging jihadis who leave to go back to European countries to carry out acts of terror -- which seems to be exactly what has been happening.

None of these groups called (openly at least) for the
destruction of the state of Israel. It was a different story though for
the ultra-reactionaries of such organisations as Al Muhajiroun, who held
placards reading, "Palestine is muslim". They chanted, "Skud, Skud
Israel" and "Gas, gas Tel Aviv", along with their support for bin Laden.
Two would-be suicide posers were dressed in combat fatigues with a
'bomb' strapped to their waists. This section accounted for no more than
200-300, but they made a noise far out of proportion to their numbers.[1]

Stories concerning Corbyn's support for jihadis was plastered on the
front pages of several newspapers one day before the general election on
June 8. He may never take charge of our national security, but
following the results of the election, which proved disastrous for May
and her Conservative party, it is now not entirely unimaginable that he
may yet form a minority government. Overconfidence in her party's
strength, a hardline stance on Brexit, and a lack of concern in her
Manifesto for public sensitivities concerning the National Health
Service, social care and pensions led May to lose the confidence of much
of the public, especially some, such as the elderly, who were
traditional Tory voters. The campaign she ran turned out to be very
badly handled. The two advisers who worked on it have just resigned,
and large numbers of citizens, including 60% of Conservatives, are
calling on her to resign. She no longer commands the large parliamentary
majority of which she was so sure when she called the election, in fact
she has no majority at all without pairing with the backward-looking
Democratic Unionist Party, founded by bigoted Ian Paisley in 1971 and
now the largest party in Northern Ireland. Many predict that the
alliance will soon founder.

Whoever remains in power in coming months, the threat of terrorism
has risen to the top of the agenda as a public preoccupation. Except
that almost nobody talked much about it in the days after the London
Bridge attack leading up to the election. Alarmingly, large numbers of
young people rushed to vote for the leader of the one party that will do
the least to combat that threat. The abolition of student fees or other
right-on issues mattered so much more. And yet, in a matter of months,
the British people have grown frightened of a beast our political
correctness and laxity helped create, a Frankenstein monster that has
risen from its slab and shows no signs of lying back down again. This
beast has, in a few fell swoops, changed the nature of politics in
Britain as it has elsewhere.

Jeremy Corbyn is the last person to whom we should entrust our future
safety, yet he is now in a position to water down or cancel any
legislation that might ensure more preparedness and better control.
Theresa May, whatever her political disaster, has at least promised
firmness in our relations with the Muslim community, identifying the
problem and calling for action.

That promise of action is exemplified in her statements that:

If we need to increase the length of custodial sentences
for terrorist-related offences -- even apparently less serious offences
-- that is what we will do. Since the emergence of the threat from
Islamist-inspired terrorism, our country has made significant progress
in disrupting plots and protecting the public. But it is time to say
"Enough is enough".

I mean longer prison sentences for those convicted of terrorist offences.I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terrorist suspects back to their own countries.And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and movements of
terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a
threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.And if our human rights laws get in the way of doing it, we will change the law so we can do it.

Clearly, not even May can ride roughshod over essential human rights
values and legislation, things put in place to protect the public. Now,
with Corbyn looking over shoulder, tough and measured action is in
jeopardy. It is clear nonetheless that an excessive concern for the
rights of dangerous individuals and hostile communities has served to
take away vital protections for the lives of British citizens. This
misguided generosity is linked to a growing worry that we have been too
relaxed about individuals who have later gone on to commit atrocities in
our midst. Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who murdered 22
concert-goers, including several children, during an Ariane Grande
concert in Manchester, had been reported to the authorities no fewer than five times, yet had been allowed to walk free enough to take forward his mission to kill and maim.

Youssef Zaghba, one of the three attackers on London Bridge and Borough Market on June 3, had been stopped in Bologna
in 2016 carrying terrorist literature while trying to fly to Istanbul
en route for Syria. He told officers "I am going to be a terrorist", was
arrested but later released. His name was flagged on an international
terrorism database and the Italian authorities notified the British
security services. Allowed to go to the UK, he helped kill seven people
and injure more.

Even more alarmingly, his accomplice, Khuram Butt, a Pakistani-born British man, was well above the horizon.
He had been reported to the security services and was alleged to have
been an associate of Anjem Choudary, a radical preacher now serving time
in jail for his support for Islamic State. Butt had defended Choudary
by calling a Muslim opposed to the preacher an apostate (murtadd); and in 2016, he had appeared
in a Channel 4 television documentary where he was seen with others in a
park holding an ISIS flag and at two events attended by radical
preachers who had been arrested for radicalizing others. One of those
preachers, Mohammed Shamsuddin, has said: "Our message is deadly, we are calling for world domination, and for Sharia for the UK."

In 2015, MI5, the UK's domestic intelligence service, stated that it had 3,000 extremists on its watchlist. According to Business Insider:

What this means, in effect, is that thousands of potential terrorists
are left free to live with little interference from the police or MI5.
Raising the number of police, as Jeremy Corbyn
demands, would place a heavy strain on the economy of a country sailing
into uncharted waters as it leaves the EU. The answer must be, as May
suggests, a different approach to human rights legislation. At the
moment, the bar for taking extremists out of circulation is set
ridiculously high. People who are known for their own extremism that
reaches pre-terrorist levels should not be walking the streets when they
have expressed support for Islamic State or tried to head to Syria or
called for the destruction of the UK and other democracies or allied
themselves to people already in prison. Their demand for free speech or
freedom of belief must never be elevated above the rights of citizens to
live safely in their own towns and cities. It is essential for
parliament to lower the bar.

That the police and security services are avoiding any real
confrontation with Islamists is clear from the contents of this letter,
sent on June 7 to the Daily Mail by pro-Israel activist Clive Hyman. It makes troubling treading:

On 18th June, Muslims will be holding a march in central
London to celebrate Al-Quds Day. In previous years these marches have
called for the destruction of Israel and death to the Jews, and the
marchers have carried signs to this effect and flags supporting Hamas,
Hezbollah and ISIS. Despite requests from both the Christian and Jewish
communities for this march to be cancelled because of the violence it
will incite amongst those participating and their followers, Mayor Khan
and the Metropolitan police have refused to do so, their reason being
that there has been no violence at these marches in previous years.By comparison, an event to honour Israel organised by Christians United for Israel for 22nd June has
been cancelled apparently because Mayor Khan and the Metropolitan
Police cannot guarantee the safety of those who wish to attend.Is this to be the political landscape for the future, where groups of
people demanding death and destruction are given the freedom of the
streets whilst those wishing to hold a peaceful celebration are
prevented from doing so?

As might be expected, leftists have rejected May's appeal
for changes in human rights legislation. They argue that she will need
to declare a state of emergency, something that can only be invoked when
the life of the nation is under threat. This is not incorrect, since
all democracies have to avoid potential dictators using changes in the
law to give themselves powers they might not otherwise have. But that is
not the whole story.

What May plans to do will take us far, but not far enough. Her
weakness, set against Corbyn's show of strength, undermines the
likelihood of any serious changes to how Britain tackles the Islamic
threat. Bit by bit, the political fear of appearing xenophobic or
"Islamophobic" will reassert itself. Labour will make sure of that.
Members of parliament with substantial numbers of Muslim constituents
will answer calls to water down any legislation that can be labelled as
discriminatory to Muslims. It is only when we come to terms with the
fact that terrorist attacks are not being carried out by Christians,
Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'is, Quakers or the members of any religion
except Islam.

Regrettably May herself fell into a politically-correct trap in her
speech, when she said in reference to Islamic radicalism, "It is an
ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth."
It is easy to see what she means by this -- that she wants to distance
radicalism and terrorism from the majority of decent Muslims in the UK,
the ones like Sara Khan who work to create a British Islam based on the
best Islamic values in alliance with the British values May rightly
extols. However, to see extremist Islam as a "perversion" of Islam
misses an important point. The politically correct insistence that
radical versions of Islam somehow pervert an essentially peaceful and
tolerant faith forces policy-makers and legislators, church leaders,
rabbis, interfaith workers and the public at large to leave to one side
an important reality. If not tackled head-on, that reality will not go
away.

In
a June 3 speech, British Prime Minister Theresa May regrettably fell
into a politically-correct trap, when she said in reference to Islamic
radicalism, "It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a
perversion of the truth." (Photo by Hannah McKay/Pool/Getty Images)

Flatly, Islam in its original and classic forms has everything to do
with today's radicals and the violence they commit. The Qur'an is
explicit in its hatred for pagans, Jews, and Christians. It calls for
the fighting of holy war (jihad) to conquer the non-Muslim world, subdue
it, and gradually bring it into the fold of Islam. Muhammad himself led
his followers into battle and sent out expeditions out of Arabia before
his death in 632. The astonishing Islamic conquests that followed in
the Middle East, Europe, and far beyond into Central Asia and India
turned a swathe of territories into Islamic fiefdoms, and most of these
remain under Muslim rule today. The Ottoman Turkish conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 not only destroyed the Eastern Orthodox Roman
Empire (the Byzantine Empire), but is still regarded by Muslims
as a turning point in the history of the world. The subsequent Ottoman
conquests across eastern Europe were only halted when the King of Poland
John III Sobieski (1629-1696) defeated a massive Turkish army under the
command of Sultan Soleiman I outside the city of Vienna.

In 2015, after Islamist attacks in Paris, French president François Hollande declared
that "We are in a war against terrorism, jihadism, which threatens the
whole world." But Islam has been at war with Europe since the seventh
century. The beheadings, crucifixions, massacres and demolitions of
towns and churches carried out by Islamic State today are replicas of
wider atrocities carried out by the Muslim conquerors of Spain in the 8th century.[2]

Jihad wars against the Byzantines were carried out twice a year.
Spain and Portugal were occupied for centuries until the Christian
kingdoms of the north drove the Muslims out, in a process that itself
took some centuries. The Ottomans continued to be a threat down to their
defeat in the First World War. From the sixteenth to late eighteenth
centuries, the Muslim slavers, known as the Barbary pirates, dominated
the Mediterranean and took more than a million Christian slaves to North
Africa. In the nineteenth century, jihad wars against European
colonists were frequent.[3]
Today, Europeans and others are fighting wars against Islamic radicals
from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria, and on the streets of our own cities.

To be at war is justification for extreme measures. Deportation and
internment are unattractive, just as the measures Western countries have
been forced to take against their enemies in other wars. But set next
to the threat of unending terror in our cities, and given the nature of
the people we will deport or intern, they are probably not as bad as the
alternative. We will not execute terrorists (just as Israel has never
executed the thousands of terrorists who have murdered its citizens) nor
torture them or harm their families. Minor adjustments to our human
rights laws and the lowering of the bar a bit on what we consider
unacceptable are all we need. But that will not stop Jeremy Corbyn and
his terrorist-supporting friends crying that such measures will be a
"slippery slope" that will set back community relations by decades.

Dr. Denis MacEoin has recently completed a large study
of concerns with Islam. He is an Arabist, Persianist, and a specialist
in Shi'i Islam. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone
Institute.

[1] See also here.[2] See Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Wilmington, 2016, chapters 1 and 2.[3] See Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History, The Hague, 1979, especially chapter 3.

Denis MacEoinhas recently completed a large study
of concerns with Islam. He is an Arabist, Persianist, and a specialist
in Shi'i Islam. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone
Institute.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10536/tolerance-extremism Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.